WASHINGTON—A day after becoming only the third bench boss in Raptors history to be named NBA Eastern Conference coach of the month, Dwane Casey went with an Oscars speech.

“It means more for the team, the organization, than it does for me. I’m sincere when I say that. It’s almost embarrassing. The guys have done all the work,” Casey said.

The weird thing? He means it.

If you want swagger, we have to turn to an unlikely Hype Man.

“Look at him — he’s been unbelievable the last couple of weeks, the last couple of months,” said Kyle Lowry. “He’s just getting better every single day, learning us even more. He’s putting us in even more situations to be successful. That award is just a testament that he has his plan.”

Famously, Casey and Lowry have not always enjoyed — ahem — a cordial understanding. Their relationship this year might be described as a mutually beneficial détente.

But Lowry is smart enough to recognize a winner when he’s handcuffed to one.

Whatever math formula you want to apply to the Rudy Gay trade — addition by addition, addition by subtraction — the real story is one of multiplication.

Jettisoning Gay and his perverse commitment to ball-stopping greased the offence. Less obviously, Gay was also a notorious moper whose on-court mood swings encouraged a nightly slide into defeatism.

Trading Gay wasn’t just a good tactical move, it was a sort of emotional intervention.

This team no longer plays somewhere between scared and bored.

On Friday night, they headed into the half up by three points. Casey beat them up in the locker room, challenging them with the 20 points in transition Washington had scored in the half.

In the third quarter, they went on lockdown, outscoring the Wizards 36-16. It ended 101-88 for Toronto.

If the playoffs started today, Toronto would play this Wizards team in the first round. And they’d beat them. It wouldn’t even be close.

The Raptors are 10-3 since the tank went awry. They’ve won five in a row. Much of that improvement is down to a change in outlook.

Everything about this team is looser. Lowry is edging perilously close to enjoying himself. Terrence Ross has stopped running around the court like he’s looking for a fire extinguisher.

“Winning is fun,” Ross said post-game, as if he’d just realized it.

DeMar DeRozan, a habitual shoulder-shrugger in front of the mics, has developed a sense of humour.

Asked if it was easier to get up for “sexy” opponents like Sunday’s opponent, Miami, DeRozan shot back: “A woman is a woman.”

If what’s different is attitudinal, then the coach deserves the applause. A crew may or may not follow their captain, but he takes the credit/blame for where they end up.

Nevertheless, Casey remains without a contract for next year.

On other teams in other situations, that’s a fire-starting recipe for friction. The Raptors wisely dealt with this pre-season by committing to a year’s risk-free trial.

In keeping with that move, GM Masai Ujiri (who was with the team in Washington) would not be drawn on the subject.

“Everything will be addressed when the time comes,” Ujiri said. “Probably the post-season. It’s not about wins and losses; it’s about the growth of our team.”

When asked about his contract situation, Casey smiled and said nothing. Unlike a lot of guys working without guarantees, he seems supremely unconcerned.

Amazing how things change. A month ago, Casey was effectively done.

There was a deep sense of unfairness to all this. Casey took over a steady loser and made them mediocre in his first year. His second campaign was torpedoed by the interference of drowning GM Bryan Colangelo. Year Three, he was chained to a tank team.

There was no rationale to firing him mid-season, but he was playing out the string.

Everything’s changed now.

Freed from human anchors Andrea Bargnani and Gay, Casey has finally been able to showcase his key contribution — culture building.

What is ‘culture?’

Without any particular star or focal point, it’s turning the whole into something more than the individual pieces. All along, Casey has stressed the idea of learning to win. In the NBA, that curve steepens in the game’s final moments.

This year, the Raptors are +71 in the fourth quarter — fourth-best in the league. Take into account the Raptors’ schedule to this point — the most difficult in the Eastern Conference — and that metric is exponentially more impressive.

There’s a lot of season left and many hard decisions yet to be made about this roster, but Casey has already proved his worth. He deserves to be the Raptors’ coach for years to come.

“We want to have an effect on the league,” Ujiri said Friday about the overall mission statement.

The best ways to achieve that in the short-term? Win, and then be seen to reward winning.

Casey knows that. Hence the smile.

Suddenly, he’s not thinking about his next job. Instead, he’s building negotiating leverage for the one he’s already in.

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